


the learning curve

by wendythewang



Category: Batman (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: (actually what dick's weird little man brain Thinks it takes to be robin), Character Study, Gen, Mentions of Dissection, What It Takes To Be Robin, may or may not b continued u know how it is, partially informed by my gf's description of pig dissection dont @ me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 09:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16060013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendythewang/pseuds/wendythewang
Summary: It's a ridiculous idea, that heroes are born, not made.Nothing worth it is ever easy. No, wait, scratch that. Nothing is ever easy at all.(So everyone knows that becoming an underage non-powered superhero takes work, but you'd be surprised sometimes at thekindof work.)





	the learning curve

Usually, running around in a Halloween costume was something you grew out of. 

Intellectually, Dick knew he could quit anytime. Not without consequence, but the option was always there. Retirement was an option. He had a choice. He would never take it, though. He knew it was a life deal. 

Back when he started out as Batman's sidekick ( _partner_ ), being Robin meant being the best. No mistakes. Pure showmanship: laugh because everything needs to look  _easy_ for you. Dick was raised for the stage, but it was a comfort to know that, if he  _wanted_ , if he  _needed_ , he could stop. 

* * *

"How did you do that?" Tim was staring at his still-bleeding arm with undue awe, but that might've been the drugs. "Your stitches are almost as good as Alfred's." A minute ago, Tim had nervously protested at the sight of the needle, wondering if they could wait until Alfred was back from his vacation to fix up Tim's arm. Dick had pulled out his shark grin in response. 

"No sweat." They really needed to get the hero-worship out of Tim. Timmy was a good Robin. Timmy was _great_. An inferiority complex wouldn't help him at all, and Dick had way too many years experience to be Tim's yardstick. "Once you've done it enough, you'll get the hang of it." 

Tim raised an unsteady eyebrow (a little like those old hand-drawn cartoons, and they didn't trace the previous frame quite right). "I've seen Bruce's stitches. They, uh, kinda suck." 

"Don't let Bruce hear you say that. He's  _sensitive_ , you know." 

"Funny," Tim grumbled. The pout on his face was  _ridiculous_. 

"Not even Batman can hear us from the Watchtower, Dick," Barbara said. Her back was to them, across the cave on the Batcomputer. But, although its lighting was for shit, the Batcave had amazing acoustics. "Don't tease him." 

"Timmy or Bruce?" 

"Tim," Barbara said, right as Tim blurted out, "I can take it!" He looked around, suddenly flushed. "I'm not sensitive." 

"You're allowed to be sensitive, even as a cape. Doesn't matter how sensitive you are, though; you'll never be as sensitive as Bruce." Tim looked ready to protest on the slur against Batman's stoicism, but Barbara chuckled in agreement. Dick grinned in her direction, though she wasn't looking, and finished the wrapping on Tim's arm. "With the stitches, Mom taught me to fix my own costumes as a kid. You can take the boy out of the circus." But you can't take the homesickness out of the boy- oops. 

Tim's eyes narrowed. Could always rely on the kid's logic to win out. "No way, mending clothing isn't an analogue to stitching up skin. The material is completely-" 

"First of all, you just called human skin a 'material'. You've seen Silence of the Lambs, right? Second, you ever mend clothes?" 

Tim paused. Took a breath. Slowly, "No." 

"There you go." Dick flicked Tim's forehead. "How would you know?" 

* * *

Mending clothing isn't an analogue to stitching up skin, Robin found out early on. 

Blood dripped slowly from the still-bleeding cut by Batman's nose, trailing dark tear tracks down his face. "I'm fine, Robin." 

Batman's voice brought Robin out of a sort of trance. He had been shivering, he realised, despite the heat of a Gotham summer night. He slipped into a smile. "Come on, B, I knew that." But did he? Robin traced the shape of the mark with his eyes, the messy shape of Robin's stitching. The needle was still in his hand. The needle was in his hand, tacky with blood. Where were his gloves? Right, he took them off for this; they're tucked in his belt. "What's the next step, Boss?" 

"You know. Remember your training." _Pretend this is a test_. Yeah, 'course. Everything was a test. Robin always tested fantastic. 

Robin closed his eyes, locked on his mind, and then, yeah, he did. 

Later, Bruce would say that the scar came from a riding accident. That made him sound very dashing, Bruce would joke, and the socialites crowded around him would laugh and agree. 

* * *

"Really," Barbara asked, "how  _did_ you get so good at stitches?" 

"I'm hurt, Babs. You weren't paying attention to me?" 

She rolled her eyes. "You were  _there_ for our Home Ec classes. Sure we learned to sew, but I still can't do stitches like that." 

"It's my magic fingers. Part of the Grayson charm." 

Barbara flicked Dick's forehead. "Non-existent. Come on, tell me your trade secrets." 

Dick glanced over at Tim, dead to the world in one of the cots. Maybe Dick should bring him upstairs. Tim would be sore in the morning, sleeping there. Dick yawned. Barbara yawned too. Huh. Maybe it was contagious. "First time I did Bruce's stitches, they were awful." 

"Expected." 

"Yeah. Rookie stitches." Dick laughed. "I screwed up so much, that first year. Rookie mistakes are the funniest...You know Gotham Academy's junior school used to have a Bio lab?" 

"What?" Barbara looked annoyed at the non sequitur. 

"We didn't need it for classes, and interest in dissection among a bunch of ten year olds was pretty low, so they turned it into a kitchen when they remodelled." 

"Hmm."  _Go on_ , she probably meant. Very Batman. No one in Gotham with a shred of patience for a good story, really. 

"I told Alfred I had a science club meeting, that I wanted to see if it was worth it. I picked the lock of the bio lab." Batman hadn't taught Robin that trick, though Bruce thought he did. Dick learned it all before, along with the knife-throwing and the diabolo and the juggling. They didn't even have a diabolo act, but Mr. O'Connor was willing to teach, and Dick wanted to know. "They had a lot of specimens for dissection, in the lab. So I grabbed some. Uh. Fetal pigs." Babs wrinkled her nose. Gross, okay, he  _knew_ that. "Cut then open and stitched them back together. Kept doing for a few hours. When I was satisfied, I put everything away where I found it. Double-bagged the specimens and everything. The smell on me was _disgusting._ " Dick took a breath. The smell, really, the  _smell_. There weren't any  _words_ for it. He spent an hour in the locker room shower, trying to get it out of his nose, and then half an hour with his head under the hand-drier. "I couldn't stand raw pork for  _ages_ , but Bruce thought I was just trying to get out of helping Alfred with the schnitzel." 

"Only you, Boy Wonder." Barbara shook her head. "But it worked." 

"It worked." _That_ memory was fantastic. "The next time I did Bruce's stitches, he said they were  _perfect_." 

That was the story, but it felt a bit like a lie. An omission, at least. Dick  _did_ learn to stitch by cutting and re-piecing fetal pigs. He  _did_ spend ages disgusted by the smell of raw pork. He  _did_ tell Alfred he was going to the school science club instead of being (technically) a juvenile delinquent. It didn't just take an afternoon though, even if he left Babs with that impression. 

It took two months. 

Being Robin meant being the best _._

* * *

Being Nightwing meant being the best, or as close as he could get, but, god, being the best was fucking exhausting sometimes. He wouldn't quit, he would  _never_ (and it was always a part of him in a way it wasn't for the rest of the humans on the Team), but he  _could_ , and that was a comfort. He wasn't an essential. He could walk away. 

(Dick was lucky for that. Jason had wanted to study literature at Gotham U. Jason had wanted to take a break in a year, to focus on his applications. Jason had wanted.) 

He had a choice, and he  _chose_ to be Nightwing. 

(He tapped Tim on the shoulder, and the kid didn't stir. Dick carried Tim into the manor and tucked him in.) 

Three months later, Tula was dead, Wally and Artemis were retired, and Kaldur was under deep cover in enemy territory, not a single other tether but Nightwing. 

Suddenly, it wasn't a choice at all. 


End file.
